Edith Joy Scovell (9 April 1907 – 19 October 1999) was an English poet and translator. Among those who admired her work were the fellow-writers

Vita Sackville-West Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson, CH (née Sackville-West; 9 March 1892 – 2 June 1962), usually known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author and garden designer. Sackville-West was a successful novelist, poet and journalist, as wel ...

and

Philip Larkin Philip Arthur Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, ''The North Ship'', was published in 1945, followed by two novels, ''Jill'' (1946) and ''A Girl in Winter'' (1947 ...

Life

Edith Joy Scovell was born in Eccleshall Bierlow, near

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...

. Her father, F. G. Scovell, was Anglican rector of the village. Joy was one of eight children. She studied at

Casterton School Casterton School was an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 3 to 18 years in the village of Casterton in rural Cumbria. In its final years it also admitted boys, up to the age of 11. The school ceased to exist in 2013, though a pr ...

Westmorland Westmorland (, formerly also spelt ''Westmoreland'';R. Wilkinson The British Isles, Sheet The British IslesVision of Britain/ref> is a historic county in North West England spanning the southern Lake District and the northern Dales. It had an ...

, and at Somerville College, Oxford, graduating in English literature.Catherine Tufariello: "Bright Margins: The Poetry of E. J. Scovell" Retrieved 5 April 2019.
/ref> Despite her background, Scovell ceased to be a religious believer: "I lost religion fairly early on," she told interviewer Jem Poster. "I mean religious faith – if indeed I ever had it." After a period spent working as a secretary and journalist, Scovell married in 1937 the ecologist

Charles Sutherland Elton Charles Sutherland Elton (29 March 1900 – 1 May 1991) was an English zoologist and animal ecologist. He is associated with the development of population and community ecology, including studies of invasive organisms. Personal life Charles S ...

, who had established the Bureau of Animal Population in Oxford. They had a daughter, Catherine Ingrid Buffonge MBE, in 1940 and a son, Robert Elton, in 1943. In general, Scovell remained reticent about private matters: "I have had a fairly ordinary life I think, with normal experiences." She died in Oxford in October 1999.

Writings

E. J. Scovell published three volumes of poetry: ''Shadows of Chrysanthemums'' (1944), ''The Midsummer Meadow'' (1946), and ''The River Steamer'' (1956). Her ''Collected Poems'' (1988,

Cholmondeley Award The Cholmondeley Awards () are annual awards for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966. Since 1991 the award has be ...

) and ''Selected Poems'' (1991) were published by Carcanet Press.

Geoffrey Grigson Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson (2 March 1905 – 25 November 1985) was a British poet, writer, editor, critic, exhibition curator, anthologist and naturalist. In the 1930s he was editor of the influential magazine ''New Verse'', and went on to p ...

, an admirer of Scovell's work, included eight of her poems in his 1949 collection ''Poetry of the Present: An Anthology of the Thirties and After''. He praised her observation, as "a poet less concerned with celebrity and self-importance than with being alive and in love.... The purest woman poet of our time." Philip Larkin included two, "The Swan's Feet" and "After Midsummer", in ''The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse'' (1973). Her poem "Child Waking" was included in the ''Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse'' (Harmondsworth, UK, 1950 and later editions). Her poem "Deaths of Flowers" is included, with reflective comment, in Janet Morley's collection ''The Heart's Time'' (SPCK 2011). Another enthusiast was Vita Sackville-West, who "came across some verses of E. J. Scovell and was so much struck by them that I cut them out to stick in a private anthology."Dust wrapper of ''The Midsummer Meadow'', quoted i
the ''Independent'' obituary, 12 November 1999. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
/ref> Scovell's many poems about children include "An Early Death", inspired by a grandchild who died at the age of three: "To have stood in the doorway in your shift of grace/With hands half lifted, so to have looked in/On mortal life, it is not nothing – is/A hammer stroke that rings and rings." Scovell translated some work by the late 19th-century Italian poet

Giovanni Pascoli Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli (; 31 December 1855 – 6 April 1912) was an Italian poet, classical scholar and an emblematic figure of Italian literature in the late nineteenth century. Alongside Gabriele D'Annunzio, he was one of the great ...

Works

*''Shadows of Chysanthemums'' (1944) *''The Midsummer Meadow'' (1946) *''The River Steamer'' (1956) *''The Space Between'' (including the Pascoli translations, 1982) *''Listening to Collared Doves'' (1986)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scovell, E. J. 1907 births 1999 deaths English women poets Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford People from Ecclesall 20th-century English women writers 20th-century English poets Writers from Sheffield